£5.36m Art Fund touring programme opens in Cornwall, sending exhibitions across the UK
Making Her Mark launches “Going Places”, a 12-show scheme moving collections between 20 museums over five years
A £5.36m touring programme from Art Fund has opened at Penlee House Gallery & Museum, beginning a five-year effort to move museum collections between venues across the UK.
The scheme, called Going Places, will circulate 12 exhibitions among 20 museums in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each show is designed to travel in sequence between partner venues rather than remain in one place.
The first exhibition, Making Her Mark: A Celebration of Women in Art, runs in Penzance until September before moving to Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum in January 2027 and then Kirkcaldy Galleries later that year. It brings together more than 60 works from three collections, including pieces by Elizabeth Forbes and Tracey Emin.
Works have been selected with travel in mind, including pieces that rarely leave their home institutions. Each venue also adds its own material, from community-selected objects to newly commissioned responses, which shift as the exhibition moves.
Other strands follow the same touring structure. Earthly Paradise: Radical Living in the UK will travel through multiple sites before reaching Dovecot Studios in 2028. Additional exhibitions will move between Liverpool, Armagh and Aberdeenshire, focusing on themes including migration, craft and landscape.
The programme is funded through National Lottery and private support and presented as a way of sustaining large-scale touring at a time when many museums have reduced such activity.
For more information on Art Fund’s Going Places programme, visit: www.artfund.org/explore/get-inspired/features/going-places-touring-exhibitions
Elena Leo is the Culture & Lifestyle Editor of Ikon London Magazine.
